CASPER - Doubling or tripling the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere this century, is predicted by scientists to cause massive shifts of entire biomes such as forests and grasslands into steppes and deserts, as much of the world turns drier and hotter. Yet a hunter advocate believes American hunters and anglers can create a new conservation ethic than can avert the worst scenarios of global climate change.

Those were the sobering messages last month at Casper College, in a lecture presented by UW Outreach, "Climate Change in Carbon Central - Developing Strategies in Wyoming," organized by Anne MacKinnon.

University of Wyoming botany professor Steve Jackson and hunting advocate Jim Posewitz of the Orion Institute, spoke of the impact climate change could have on the world's and Wyoming's habitats and wildlife, and how a recharged conservation ethic led by hunters and anglers could make a positive difference.

Jackson, who has studied tree rings, packrat middens and swamp sediments for 30 years, said carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere were fairly constant for many hundreds of thousands of years - until the Industrial Revolution started burning massive quantities of fossil fuels, and the world's forests started falling under the ax and then chainsaw.

According to scientists, atmospheric physics has allowed the Earth to radiate away yet keep warmth from the sun - within a range that doesn't overheat the planet like Venus or deep-freeze it like Mars. The release of millions of years of stored up CO2 in less than two centuries is threatening to upset that habitable range, adding gases that capture more warmth than before.

"The scientific consensus is that the trend is real, it is human-caused and it will have significant consequences," said Jackson.



Looking ahead from the past

To understand what could happen in the future, Jackson looks to the past - hundreds, thousands and millions of years. He and other scientists have studied tree rings, sediment deposits (pollen says what was alive at deposition) and bubbles in ancient ice.

Even without the accelerant of massive amounts of CO2 in the atmosphere, past climates have changed much more rapidly than anyone had previously guessed, he said.

"Change happens," said Jackson and often involves surprises that must have been unpleasant for anyone living during particular climate changes.

"Some 12,000 years ago, we were in the midst of deglacial warming when we had a hiccup," said Jackson - a sudden four-to-10-degree average drop in global temperatures that took place in a decade.

Such sudden changes can put such stress on habitats and species that some species don't survive.

"We've learned that our climate system is predisposed to falling off cliffs," he said. Change the climate and you change the ecology and everything that entails, he added.



Scientists may be conservative

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a body of 2,500 scientists around the world, has written a series of reports, making a variety of predictions based on a range of assumptions. Jackson said IPCC reports are conservative, in that they reflect the consensus of opinion and judgment by the 2,500 scientists - just what they can all agree upon, and nothing more.

That makes him worry that the IPCC has erred in underestimating some risks, such as how high sea levels can rise or how abrupt change can be.

Jackson also worries about positive feedback loops, like the methane trapped in permafrost and peat bogs in the far north. Methane is 20 times stronger in its global warming impact than carbon dioxide alone, so if the permafrost and peat bogs start melting or warming up, the methane would be released and global warming would accelerate that much more. There are already signs of melting permafrost, he said.

Here in the Rocky Mountains, Jackson said global warming has already blocked the bitter winters needed to kill overwintering mountain pine beetles. The beetles, which have always been part of the ecosystem, now have no meaningful restraint on their population, and have exploded across the Rocky Mountain forests, leaving hundreds of square miles of dead and dying forests.

Jackson said he's seeing enough evidence of accelerating global climate change, that he's no longer hopeful that global warming can be prevented. He said society still has to try, but regulatory agencies and political organizations are so slow to respond, society had best find ways to adapt.



Is there Hope?

Yet Jim Posewitz, founder of Orion, the Hunter's Institute in Montana, believes there is room for hope, noting that a continental-wide conservation ethic took hold of North America in the last century, saving wildlife and wild lands from commercial hunting, extermination and development.

Posewitz said that in the 1700 and 1800s, a conservation ethic was hard to find, outside the New England drawing rooms of the Transcendentalists like Emerson and Thoreau. Citing the history of Theodore Roosevelt and later Franklin D. Roosevelt, Posewitz said those two political leaders helped galvanize a conservation ethic into a powerful force that saved the United States from impoverishing itself by wiping out big game or allowing the winds of the Dust Bowl to blow away America's bread basket.

In a follow-up telephone interview, Posewitz said the challenge of climate change is bigger than continental North America, but predicted hunters and anglers were up to the challenge.

"We must have hope," he said, insisting that America can respond to climate change with a new conservation ethic, based on past successes such as game and fish regulations, habitat restoration, restoration and reintroduction of species.

Sadly, Posewitz doesn't see another Roosevelt on the horizon. In recent presidential debates, neither candidate responded to questions about global warming, instead turning to energy issues.

Still, he's encouraged by a 2006 survey of sportsmen by the National Wildlife Federation. The majority agreed they're already seeing the effects of global warming where they hunt and fish, and believe immediate action should be taken.

"The people will either coalesce around a leader or they'll exercise their ingenuity and restraint at the local level," Posewitz said.



Wyoming Business Report Managing Editor Brodie Farquhar can be reached at brodief@wyoming.com or the Casper office, 307 577-1111 or 307 333-4024.